Medicina
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Background and objective: The noncompliance of treatment guidelines by healthcare professionals, along with physiological variations, makes the pediatric population more prone to antibiotic prescribing errors. The present study aims to evaluate the prescribing practices and errors of the most frequently prescribed antibiotics among pediatric patients suffering from acute respiratory tract infections who had different lengths of stay (LOS) in public hospitals. Methods: A retrospective, cross-sectional study was conducted in five tertiary-care public hospitals of Lahore, Pakistan, between 1 January 2017 and 30 June 2017. ⋯ Patients who were prescribed with ≥3 antibiotics per prescription (OR = 1.724, 95% CI = 1.1⁻2.1, p-value = 0.020), had long LOS (OR = 12.5, 95% CI = 10.1⁻17.6, p-value < 0.001), and were suffering from upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) (OR = 2.8, 95% CI = 1.7⁻3.9, p-value < 0.001) were more likely to experience prescribing errors. Conclusion: Antibiotics were commonly prescribed to patients who had long LOS. Prescribing errors (wrong dose, wrong frequency, and duplicate therapy) were commonly found in cases of lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs), especially among those who had prolonged stay in hospital.